Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

Employment

Since March 2020, many have experienced employment disruptions such as a layoff, reduction of hours, or unpaid leave (figure 1). Twenty percent of people who were working at the time of the annual SHED survey in October 2019 said they were laid off between March and when they took the supplemental survey in late July.³ Additionally, 10 percent of October 2019 workers had their hours reduced or took unpaid leave, but were not laid off.

Layoffs have not affected all workers equally. Hispanic and Black adults were more likely to report a layoff between March and July (table 1). In addition, a larger share of working women than men were laid off, which is a departure from previous recessions.

Table 1. Proportion of adults working in October 2019 who were laid off since March 2020 (by demographic characteristics)

At the same time that many reported employment disruptions, others reported working more. Twen-ty percent of people who were working in October reported working increased hours or overtime between March and July. Additionally, 5 percent of all adults started a job between March and July.

Some workers who were laid off had also returned to work or were working at another job in July. Thirty percent of workers who were laid off said in July that they had returned to their former job, up from 5 percent in April (figure 2). An additional 10 percent said that they were employed and did not expect to return to the old job.⁴

Still, a larger share of laid-off workers expected the layoff to be permanent than was the case in April. In July, 22 percent of adults who had been laid off said that they were not employed and that they did not expect to return to their old job. This is up from 7 percent of laid-off workers who reported in April that they were not employed and did not expect to return to their old job.

Another important feature of the employment situation since March has been larger disruptions among workers in families with low incomes. The rate of layoffs was substantially higher among workers from low-income families. Between March and July, 28 percent of October workers in families making less than $40,000 per year at the time were laid off.⁵ In contrast, layoffs affected 13 percent of October workers in families making more than $100,000 per year over the same period.

Laid-off workers in low-income families were also less likely to say that they had returned to work at their original job. One-fourth of workers in low-income families who experienced a layoff said they had returned to work for the same employer (figure 3). In contrast, 32 percent of middle-income and 39 percent of high-income workers who were laid off had returned to their same job.

Work Location and Concerns about COVID-19 at Work

The pandemic also has continued to affect where people physically do their work. Although the frequency of remote work has declined since April, it remains elevated. Thirty-one percent of workers did all of their work from home in the week before the survey, compared to 41 percent who did so in early April (figure 4).

Workers with more education, however, were more likely to work from home. In July, 12 percent of workers with a high school degree or less worked entirely from home, compared to half of workers with a bachelor's degree. Each number was down from the proportion that said they worked entirely from home in April.

Differences by education in the proportion of adults who worked from home translate into different levels of exposure to others. Indeed, 85 percent of workers who were not entirely telecommuting said that they were within six feet of someone for more than five minutes on the most recent day that they went to work. Thirty-five percent had close contact with at least 10 people. Conditional on going into work, workers with different levels of education reported that they were exposed to similar numbers of people each day.

Overall, most adults felt their employer was taking adequate precautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Roughly three-fourths of workers said that their employer was taking about the right amount of precautions for their safety. This compares to 18 percent of workers who felt that their employer was not taking enough precautions and 7 percent who felt their employer took too many precautions.

Since half of workers with bachelor's degrees were working from home, these workers likely had less potential exposure to the virus at their jobs. And the differences in exposure by education were reflected in workers' evaluations of the precautions that their employers took. Sixteen percent of workers with a bachelor's degree said that their employer had not taken enough precautions against the coronavirus, while 21 percent of workers with a high school degree or less responded the same way.

Black and Hispanic workers also were disproportionately likely to say that their employers were not taking enough precautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Twenty-seven percent of Black workers said that their employer was not taking enough precautions, while 23 percent of Hispanic workers and 16 percent of White workers responded similarly (figure 5).

Different views of employer's precautions by race and ethnicity reflected different rates of working from home, among other factors. Twenty-two percent of Hispanic workers and 28 percent of Black workers worked entirely from home over the week before the survey, compared to 33 percent of White workers. Across all races and ethnicities, adults who did none of their work from home were twice as likely as those working completely from home to say their employer was not taking enough precautions (19 percent versus 9 percent).

Work and Family

Potential school closures in the fall, accompanied by increased family and childcare responsibilities, could affect some parents' ability to maintain formal employment. While most working parents did not expect potential school closures in the fall to affect their work, 22 percent expected to work less or stop working altogether if their local schools do not have in-person classes (figure 6).⁶ These potential labor market effects were the largest for working parents living in households with primary-school-aged children, among whom nearly 3 in 10 expected to work less or stop working altogether. Additionally, working mothers, at 27 percent, were more likely than working fathers to report that they expected to work less or stop working altogether.

Footnotes